SR Fudge: “It’s like the process of being a pro player: You lose. It’s competitive. It’s hard.”

Q: Your roster is really confusing — a lot of people are really low on you guys right now. Are you feeling like you’re underrated after facing strong opponents?

Fudge: To be honest, we aren’t very good right now, even in scrims. I mean, it’s pretty clear to us that — well, we haven’t scrimmed FLY, but against every other team — TL, C9, LYON are better than us in scrims.

The rest, [we’re] way better than — some of the bottom teams like DIG, DSG. We haven’t scrimmed SEN much either. We mainly scrimmed [DIG and DSG] this week, and we’re winning scrims against those guys, but we’re losing against the best teams.

I don’t think any of us think that we’re [a] top team. At least not right now.

So, you know, it’s been difficult, obviously. Our stage games, I feel like, are pretty bad. Some of the games are just hard based off comp, but most of the time it’s just, honestly, not playing towards our win condition, or messing up lanes — for example, our last game — and messing up early game.

I don’t think we’re shit, but we’re definitely not in the top 3 right now, in terms of skills.

I mean, we’re doing all we can to improve, right? We’re just scrimming and practicing — and that’s all we can really do to improve. I try not to think too much about standings and stuff.

Q: Does the pace of the split increase the pressure, or is it just reminiscent of LTA?

Fudge: It definitely increases pressure a lot, especially now that we’ve lost. Obviously we got [the] best team out of all the 0-1 teams.

Even though they did lose to C9, I did think [TL] would be pretty hard to play against. I do think Morgan is the best top laner that I’ve played against in NA.

Q: The best ever, or right now?

Fudge: Right now — I mean, in terms of like laning, I think he’s probably the best, especially […] he’s known for his Renekton. Today, he played the lane pretty well and I obviously missed a lot of CS and I didn’t get good recalls, and it snowballed, right? […]

Now especially, there’s a lot of pressure. I do have more confidence against Dignitas for sure, but it’s not gonna be easy. It’s not like we’re really, really good right now, so we just need to keep focusing on scrims and … honestly just fucking figuring it out.

It’s like the process of being a pro player: You lose. It’s competitive. It’s hard.

You have to overcome those challenges; these small mistakes in-game that you make add up, and they cost you games.

Q: Do you feel like laning or 1v1 matchups are the problem for you right now?

Fudge: I wouldn’t say so, for the most part. I actually don’t think so. I think laning in general has been fine for me. I don’t think it’s been the reason that [I’ve struggled]. I don’t think that’s been generally my major issue.

I do think it’s always something that matters the most for top laners, especially now with the new quest system — if you get ahead, then you get really ahead. And if you get behind, you get really behind. 

And it’s very punishing because you’re more isolated, generally; less lane-swapping, et cetera, whatever.

So lane will always be the major focus of any game for me — unless, obviously, I was just winning lane every game and then we ended up losing cause I was making the same egregious mistakes over and over and over.

But generally it’ll just be about laning and team fighting, gor top laners. Like you kind of just lane and then whichever person has more gold for the team fights [has a better position]. And you play the team fights, and if you play the team fights well you win the game.

And today, like my Rumble game I think I laned fine — I think I laned like pretty decent to be honest. I was in a good spot in lane, was able to get move timers, was able to avoid any jungle ganks, get grubs, stuff like this.

And that’s kind of just my job as Rumble versus Ambessa. In teamfights, I could’ve used my ult a bit better. I could [play better] mechanically with my ult, and maybe that could have changed like the team fights around.

But for me, the main mistakes I made today with Game 2, I honestly think I laned poorly. I used Q at poor times so I couldn’t CS without taking really bad trades, and I wasn’t able to recall for Tabis. If you can’t recall for Tabis [as Gnar vs Renekton], then it’s really hard on the next timer.

And then, you know, it snowballed from there — he just slowly went up CS and then eventually they had 3 grubs and we traded sides, and I lost my full tower because obviously I can’t defend with minions against Renekton-Nocturne dive.

That snowballed from the poor laning phase. If I did have Tabis, maybe I could just push the wave in front of his face and they couldn’t crash a wave — and I could, you know, defend myself against the dive.

It’s not so easy to play Gnar against Renekton-Nocturne-Orianna. I was considering not playing it, but I thought it was probably my best option and the one I practiced the most in scrims. So that’s why I picked it. And I just honestly executed poorly in lane.

Q: Every top laner seems pretty strong right now — what do you think of Photon?

Fudge: I mean, I think… I respect him.

I agree with you that pretty much every top laner in the league right now is pretty good. There’s no real “easy” top laner to play against where they just clearly don’t play lane that well and they don’t really have anything going for them.

Photon and Castle I would consider probably [the easiest] top laners to lane against from my perspective. Maybe Gakgos or Dhokla around there, but they’re also on a better team — so the general game feeling is just easier [against Photon and Castle].

Q: Including Gakgos on carries, or just tanks?

Fudge: I mean, Gakogs, I think it’s hard for me to know because I haven’t scrimmed Fly to be honest. I haven’t played against him except for my two games [on-stage] when he was playing K’sante and Sion; matchups that were obviously kind of whatever — we don’t really interact that much generally.

But when I watch him, I mean, I think he’s pretty good. I guess I’d say Dhokla has more flair to him; he makes more aggressive decisions, makes the lane more volatile. […]

I mean, obviously the Gakgos narrative is that “He’s young and he plays carries and he’s like mechanical,” and stuff like this, but from playing against him, he just plays kind of normally.

I don’t feel much aggression, per se. Sometimes you can tell when someone’s a little bit crazy in the way they play and they make more risky decisions, like, “You don’t know my jungler’s here, but you’re fighting anyway” — that kind of thing. He doesn’t really do that stuff.

I would say [Gakgos] is pretty normal. I would consider most of the top laners kind of normal. To be honest, I don’t think anyone was really that crazy — except back in the day, obviously Bwipo would make some crazy decisions.

Q: Other players have called you guys inconsistent. Do you feel a level of inconsistency in practice or on-stage?

Fudge: For me, at least generally — in scrims — I wouldn’t say that we’re even inconsistent. I feel like it kind of looks similar to what happened on-stage; we kind of just miss certain things at certain timings. We mess up the little things and then we lose.

Game 2 was actually like, in my head, a little more of a one-off — the laning aspect was really bad. I felt like, from the early game, we got really far behind — [but] generally are early games are okay in most [scrims and on-stage], but mid-game we lose track of variables, and we mess up the mid-game teamfight or macro, something like this.

I wouldn’t say that we’re inconsistent. I don’t think that’s the word I’d put to it. […] It’s really hard to say, but I do think we make mid-game errors, [it’s] definitely our weakest point as a team. It tends to go bad in mid game, [not] early game, for us.

But it’s not really something I think about that much, to be honest. I don’t really think about, like, “Are we consistent or inconsistent?” It’s like, “What do we need to get better at?”

For me, my main focus will always be lane. And obviously for the team, a lot of it is tracking timers where we don’t get caught out, which is a general problem we have in scrims that also happens on stage.

Q: Does it feel like, with the mid lane change, SR might have lost a primary mid-game shotcaller? That’s something Palafox was known for.

Fudge: It would be dependent on the game back then, but I wouldn’t say he was the primary caller. I think it was always Contractz, so I don’t think that changed that much.

Obviously, there is a little bit of a language barrier with Zinie and sometimes we’re not on the same page as him; what he wants to do versus what we want to do.

But I wouldn’t say that it’s like a really huge issue where we’re like, that’s the reason that [we’re struggling]. I think it’s always been kind of Contractz doing most of the work in terms of when we’re going, or where we’re going, and stuff like this.

And Ceos has also been stepping up quite a bit in terms of communication and leading in mid-game. So he’s been improving on that a lot too.

Header Image Credit: Riot Games